Summary

The National Criminal Justice Treatment Practices (NCJTP) Survey provides a comprehensive inquiry into the nature of programs and services provided to adult and juvenile offenders involved in the justice system in the United States. Participants included key criminal justice administrators, operations managers, and staff. This survey was conducted in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The survey involved a myriad of state, regional, and local organizations employing a mix of their own staff and contracted personnel, and services that might involve multiple levels of government. It was a self-administrated, paper-and-pencil questionnaire. The methodology included a multilevel approach that captured the perspective of executives, front-line administrators, and line staff about current practices in a range of institutional and community correctional settings for adults and juveniles. The goals for this survey were: to describe current drug treatment practices, policies, and delivery systems for offenders on probation or parole supervision, and in jails, prisons, and youth institutions; to examine agency structures, resources, and other organizational factors that may affect service delivery, including mission, leadership, climate, culture, and beliefs about rehabilitation versus punishment; and to assess coordination and integration across criminal justice agencies and between corrections and treatment systems.
Items in the survey included: respondent characteristics, organizational characteristics, correctional programs characteristics (e.g., size, nature, etc.), substance abuse treatment programs characteristics, social networks/agencies collaboration, integration of services with other agencies, attitudes toward punishment and rehabilitation (personal values), organizational needs assessment, organizational culture and climate for treatment, cynicism toward change, organizational commitment to treatment, and perspectives on intradepartmental coordination.

Geographic Coverage

Smallest Geographic Unit

county

Restrictions

This data collection may not be used for any purpose other than statistical reporting and analysis. Use of these data to learn the identity of any person or establishment is prohibited. To protect respondent privacy, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) has removed direct identifiers, some sensitive text information and characteristics that might lead to identification of data subjects.

Time Period(s)

Date of Collection

Data Collection Notes

Reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) overseeing research at each of the 11 research centers comprising National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) CJ-DATS network.

The sampling frame for S2: Survey of corrections clinical directors and alcohol and drug agency directors data was based on having one central person in each agency that was aware of the programs and services offered. It was determined that at the end the data provided could not be validated because most agencies did not have one central person who knew the agency programs and services. It was determined to use S3 data for the national estimates.

The survey involves a myriad of state, regional, and local organizations employing a mix of their own staff and contracted personnel, and the services may involve multiple levels of government.

Study Purpose

The objectives of this study were to describe the current drug treatment practices, policies, and delivery systems of offenders on probation or parole supervision, and in jails, prisons, and youth institutions. In addition, it was meant to examine agency structures, resources, and other organizational factors that may affect service delivery, including mission, leadership, climate, culture, and beliefs about rehabilitation versus punishment. Finally, it assesses the coordination and integration across criminal justice agencies and between corrections and treatment systems.

Study Design

The mode of the survey was a self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire. This study consisted of a survey delivered to employees within correctional and treatment systems nationally, including agency administrators, wardens, program managers, and counselors and correctional
officers. The survey included questions about the organizational structure and resources, the work
environment, support for treatment, the value and purpose of substance abuse
treatment, and the type and amount of treatment services offered. It was estimated the survey would take about 30 to 60 minutes to complete.
Administrators also requested the permission of agency directors that staff who participate should be allowed
to complete the survey during regular work hours. Participants were able to access the findings at the CJ-DATS
(www.cjdats.org) Web site and by the researchers.

Universe

The universe for Part 1 (Survey of Executives Data) includes all executives of state agencies, executives in correctional agencies responsible for programs and services. The universe for Part 2 (Survey of Administrators Data) includes administrators responsible for the facility, office, or program identified in adult prisons, juvenile residential facilities, and community sample. For Part 3 (Survey of Treatment Program Directors Data), the universe includes prison wardens, directors of juvenile facilities, jail wardens and directors (who were sheriffs in some counties), and administrators responsible for local probation and parole offices. The universe for Part 4 (Survey of Correctional, Probation, and Parole Staff Data)
Include staff working in prison and community-based agencies and programs that were located in states covered by the Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies (CJ-DATS). And the universe for Part 5 (Survey of Treatment Staff Data) includes all the treatment staffs working in prisons and community-based agencies, and programs that were located in states covered by the CJ-DATS.

Data Type(s)

survey data

Mode of Data Collection

mail questionnaire

mixed mode

Response Rates

The response rate for Part 1 (Survey of Executives Data) was 70.8 percent. The response rate for
Part 2 (Survey of Administrators Data) and Part 3 (Survey of Treatment Program Directors Data) totaled 62.5 percent.
The response rate for Part 4 (Survey of Correctional, Probation, and Parole Staff Data) and Part 5 (Survey of Treatment Staff Data) totaled 33.9 percent.

Original Release Date

2010-08-09

Version Date

2010-08-09

Version History

2010-08-09 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Standardized missing values.

Created online analysis version with question text.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

This website is funded through Inter-agency agreements through the Bureau of
Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of
the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor any of its
components operate, control, are responsible for, or necessarily endorse, this website (including, without limitation,
its content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided).